Beethoven and the Piano:
Philology, Context and Performance Practice
Online-Conference (Zoom)
Wednesday 4 to Saturday 7 November 2020
L. van Beethoven, Piano Sonata Op. 110/iii, Beethoven-Haus Bonn, HCB BMh 2/42
Organised by the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) and the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana, Lugano
With the scientific support of the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, and the Italian Musicological Society
www.hkb-interpretation.ch/beethoven2020
Zoom link for all four days: https://zoom.us/j/94425541164
Some notes:
1. there is a waiting room set up on Zoom so we can in quiet test the technical equipment of the day’s speakers and therefore check the attendees. Please use your full name when entering.
2. all guests will be muted. Depending on your internet connection, it might be better if your camera is turned off.
3. the session is being recorded. By having your microphone muted and camera off you will remain off the recording. In turning them on, you authorize being on the recording.
4. all questions are to be asked via the chat function, and will be put forward at the end of each day. The chair will invite those with questions on screen (microphone unmuted, camera on) – if you do not wish to ask the question on screen, please place an X at the end of your question so we can ask the question for you.
5. at the end of each day we would like to facilitate informal exchange and discussions (without further recording). For this purpose, all remaining participants are sent to random breakout rooms (microphone and camera now turned on). If you would like to change your breakout room, just return to the main room. After 30 minutes you will be informed that the session will end shortly.
Further personal communication may be organised in the private chat and with other tools.
Wednesday, 4 November 2020
Zoom (16:00–19:30 CET (= UTC +1)) (see time calculator for your local time)
Chair: Martin Skamletz
16:00 Christoph Brenner (CSI, Lugano), Thomas Gartmann (HKB, Bern) Welcome
Session 1: Piano notation and performance practice 16:10 Robert Adelson (Conservatoire de Nice) Beethoven’s Erard Piano – A Gift After All 16:40 Barry Cooper (University of Manchester)
Beethoven’s Pedal Marks Revisited
17:10 Marten Noorduin (University of Oxford)
Beethoven’s Indicators of Expression in his Piano Works 17:40 Coffee Break
17:55 Mario Aschauer (University of Texas, Huntsville)
Text, Context, and Performance Practice – 83 Diabelli Variations 18:25 Dorian Komanoff Bandy (McGill University, Montreal)
Beethoven’s Melodic Embellishments – Tradition, Notation, and Memory 18:55 Questions and answers
19:30 End of Conference Day 1, informal exchange in breakout rooms 20:30 Concert live stream: Olga Pashchenko, piano (works by Beethoven)
https://www.conservatorio.ch/it/fondazione/eventi-e-streaming
Thursday, 5 November 2020
Zoom (16:00–19:30 CET (= UTC +1)) (see time calculator for your local time)
Chair: Claudio Bacciagaluppi
Session 2: Piano notation and performance practice 16:00 Neal Peres da Costa (University of Sydney)
Asynchrony and Arpeggiation in Beethoven’s Works with Piano. Contextualising the Evidence of Annotations by Musicians Connected with Beethoven and Vienna 16:30 Siân Derry (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire)
Beethoven’s Tied-Note Notation – An Ongoing Debate
Session 3: Beethoven and the pianos
17:00 Michael Ladenburger (formerly Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)
Beethoven’s Early Approach to Different Types of Keyboard Instruments in Bonn 17:30 Coffee Break
17:45 Martin Skamletz (HKB)
A Gesture of Transgression – Beethoven’s Compositional Response to the Extension of the Keyboard Range in the “Waldstein” Sonata
18:15 Tilman Skowroneck (University of Gothenburg) Beethoven and the Split Damper Pedal
18:45 Questions and answers
19:30 End of Day 2, informal exchange in breakout rooms
20:30 Concert live stream: Ensemble Zefiro & Leonardo Miucci, piano (works by Beethoven and Mozart)
https://www.conservatorio.ch/it/fondazione/eventi-e-streaming
Friday, 6 November 2020
Zoom (16:00–19:30 CET (= UTC +1)) (see time calculator for your local time)
Chair: Leonardo Miucci
Session 4: Sources and performance practice
16:00 Yew Choong Cheong (UCSI University Institute of Music, Kuala Lumpur) A Historically Informed Perspective of Beethoven’s Idiosyncratic Dynamics and Accents in his Piano Works
16:30 Clive Brown (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien) Beethoven’s Sonatas Op. 47 and Op. 96 – Text and Sub-Text
17:00 Claudio Bacciagaluppi (HKB)
Hans Georg Nägeli as Publisher and Bookseller 17:30 Coffee Break
Session 5: Philology and performance practice 17:45 Susanne Cox (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)
Searching for Beethoven’s “Concept” – Working Manuscripts Between Sketch and Fair Copy
18:15 Sandra Rosenblum (Concord Academy Emerita)
Publishers’ Practices and Other Happenings in the Life of Beethoven’s Quintet for Piano and Woodwinds Op. 16
18:45 Questions and answers
19:30 End of Day 3, informal exchange in breakout rooms
Saturday, 7 November 2020
Zoom (16:00–19:30 CET (= UTC +1)) (see time calculator for your local time)
Chair: Clive Brown
Session 6: Beethoven and the pianos
16:00 Tom Beghin (Orpheus Instituut, Gent)
Beethoven’s Erard Piano and his ‘Waldstein’ Sonata Op. 53*
16:30 Christine Siegert (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn) Beethoven’s Encyclopedic Writing for the Piano 17:00 Leonardo Miucci (HKB)
The Agogic Use of Dynamic Marks in Beethoven Piano Sonatas 17:30 Coffee Break
17:45 Questions and answers –
18:15 Round table “Publishing Beethoven today” (Chair: Douglas Woodfull-Harris, Bärenreiter editor/manager)
19:30 End of the conference, informal exchange in breakout rooms
* As an extra, Tom Beghin makes accessible (until November 8, 2020) the performance of the full ‘Waldstein’ sonata on Vimeo. You are best prepared for his talk, when you listen to it prior to his paper.
Link: https://vimeo.com/419831007 Password: Beethoven_and_the_Piano
Abstracts
Robert Adelson (Conservatoire de Nice) Beethoven’s Erard Piano – A Gift After All
The circumstances surrounding Beethoven’s acquisition of an Erard piano in 1803 have been the subject of much debate among musicologists. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it had been thought that Beethoven received the piano as a gift in recognition of his international stature as a composer, as had been the case for Haydn in 1800. In 2005, Maria Rose seemed to refute this belief in an article arguing that the Erard ledgers prove that Beethoven, then a little-known and largely unappreciated composer in France, ordered the piano from Erard, but never paid for it. As a result, subsequent publications have universally treated the ‘gift myth’ with disdain. This interpretation, however, is based on a misreading of the Erard firm’s bookkeeping practices, and an assumption that the Erards either recorded gifts in a separate and now lost ledger, or that they gave instruments as gifts without keeping written traces. In fact, the Erard brothers had consistent ways of indicating gifts in the sales ledgers, which are clearly present in the entry for piano No. 133 sent to Beethoven. In my close reading of the Erard ledgers, and in light of newly-discovered documents in the Erard family archives, I demonstrate that the piano was indeed a gift from the Erards to Beethoven, although perhaps not for the reasons that had previously been assumed. I conclude with a discussion of the significance of this gift for Beethoven’s piano music.
Robert Adelson is professor of music history and organology at Conservatoire de Nice- Université Côte d’Azur. He is a specialist on the history of the piano and the harp, and has also published widely on opera and the sociology of music. His numerous publications include The History of the Erard Piano and Harp in Letters and Documents, 1785–1959 (2 vols., Cambridge University Press, 2015) and two forthcoming monographs on the Erard harp and the Erard piano. Between 2005 and 2016, he was curator of France’s second largest collection of historical musical instruments, housed in the Musée du Palais Lascaris in Nice.
He is also the curator of the first permanent exhibition of the Camac Collection of historical harps at the Château d’Ancenis (Loire-Atlantique). He is a member of the Board of Governors of the American Musical Instrument Society and has served on the supervisory committee of the Gaveau-Erard-Pleyel archives and on the jury for the Thalberg International Piano Competition. He frequently lectures on the history of instruments, including at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and the Geelvinck Piano Museum in the Netherlands. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Frances Densmore Prize from the American Musical Instrument Society.
Barry Cooper (University of Manchester) Beethoven’s Pedal Marks Revisited
There has been much misunderstanding and ignorance about Beethoven’s pedal marks.
Having worked on the subject with my PhD student Chi-fang Cheng, I can now address many questions not previously answered satisfactorily and in some cases not even asked. When
precisely did Beethoven begin including pedal marks in his autograph scores and publications – and in his sketches – and why did he not do so earlier? How reliable are modern editions in showing the precise location of his pedal marks? Did he ever indicate, or intend, syncopated pedalling (where the pedal is lifted as a new chord is struck, and then immediately
depressed)? How far did he respond to changing piano design by adopting different pedalling patterns in his later works? How often did he mark pedal in his vocal works – his 70 or so songs with piano and his 179 folksong settings, which have never previously been examined from this point of view? Did he ever place pedal marks in direct response to the lyrics? In his early works where there are no pedal markings, how far did he intend pedal to be added, and in what types of places? And in his later works, how far could he rely on performing traditions and common sense in allowing pianists to devise their own pedalling, disregarding his
markings? Answers to these questions may help those modern pianists who wish to convey Beethoven’s intentions as accurately as possible, although there is of course no obligation to do so.
Barry Cooper is a professor of music at the University of Manchester. He is best known for his research on Beethoven and has written or edited eight books on the composer, the most recent being The Creation of Beethoven’s 35 Piano Sonatas (2017). His critical performing edition of Beethoven’s 35 Piano Sonatas (2007), with extensive commentary, was proclaimed
‘Best Classical Publication’ of the year by the Music Industries Association. He has also published critical performing editions of Beethoven’s Mass in C (2016) and Missa solemnis (2019). His completion of the first movement of Beethoven’s unfinished Tenth Symphony has been widely performed and appeared in a new edition in 2013 (Vienna: Universal Edition).
His other publications include Child Composers and Their Works: A Historical Survey (2009), monographs on English Baroque keyboard music and on music theory in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries, three catalogues of musical source material, and numerous journal articles.
Marten Noorduin (University of Oxford)
Beethoven’s Indicators of Expression in his Piano Works
Many aspects of Beethoven’s notation have been the subject of focussed studies, from his pedal indications to his appoggiaturas to his tempo indications. His indicators of expression, such as dolce, espressivo, calando, and others, however, have not achieved the same level of scholarly interest, despite their frequent occurrence in Beethoven’s scores. The few
engagements that do exist, often in the explanatory notes of scholarly editions, typically limit themselves to discussing these indications in terms of the way they are described in treatises of the time, without considering Beethoven’s specific uses of these terms.
This paper will take the definitions of Johann Philipp Kirnberger, C. P. E. Bach, and most importantly Beethoven’s contemporary Heinrich Christoph Koch as a starting point, and explore to what extent they might apply to Beethoven’s usage. Rather than focussing on a small subset of Beethoven’s output, which could lead to skewed results, this paper will draw on a searchable database of all of Beethoven’s compositions. Focussing on case studies from early and late piano works, but without losing touch with Beethoven’s wider practices, this paper will show how Beethoven’s use of these expression markings developed during the
course of his lifetime. This historical overview will then form the basis for historically plausible but also radically new interpretations of these indications.
Marten Noorduin obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester in 2016 for his thesis Beethoven’s Tempo Indications. Since 2017, he has been associated with the AHRC-funded project “Transforming Nineteenth-Century Historically Informed Practice (TCHIP)” at the University of Oxford. His publications include research articles, essays, and reviews in Nineteenth-Century Music Review, The Musical Times, Notes, and Eighteenth-Century Music on a variety of topics related to Beethoven and other nineteenth-century composers, with a specific focus on issues related to historical and current performance practices. His latest article, “The Metronome Marks for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Context”, will be published by Early Music in 2021.
Mario Aschauer (University of Texas, Huntsville)
Text, Context, and Performance Practice – 83 Diabelli Variations
Along with the development of the historically informed performance (HIP) movement in the twentieth century, the ‘urtext’ became the widely recognised standard type of edition. While the exact definition of the term and its practical application have been debated from the very beginning, in practice the ‘urtext’ model is based on the principle that there is one work and, consequently, one text. The editor functions as the work’s advocate deciding “which source provides the ‘correct’ (= the composer’s ultimate) text, and which is ‘wrong’” (G. Henle website). Towards the end of the century, scholarly doubt in the ‘urtext’ ideology increased (“abstract, artificial fabrication” [Wolff 1998]), calling for a more differentiated philological approach. As a result, the field has seen more and more digital projects that seek to primarily reproduce the primary sources, leaving much of the editor’s job to the performer. Without question, both approaches have their value for particular groups of users and have covered the field so thoroughly that the justifiable question was recently raised whether there is any scope for another edition of Beethoven’s piano music (Noorduin 2019). Arguing that there is, indeed, I advocate in my paper for an approach that combines traits of both philosophies into an editorial method that responds to and interacts with the developments of about a century of historically informed performance research. I exemplify my reasoning in my recent edition of Diabelli’s Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Because of Beethoven’s particular work
circumstances, he revised the two main manuscript sources (the autograph and a copy for a planned London edition) independently of each other and, in part, using one of his sketch books as an intermediary. As a consequence, the three manuscripts document differing autograph variants for many passages. To complicate things further, the first edition contains even more alternative readings of uncertain authorship.
I propose that, rather than looking for ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, the editor’s focus should shift towards finding ways to intelligibly present the ambiguities of the sources as the precious clues into Beethoven’s world of thought that they are. I argue further that, if Diabelli’s Vaterländischer Künstlerverein is primarily aimed at Viennese fortepiano players of the late 1820s, an understanding of that target group’s standard modes of pianistic practice is almost as important as the musical text itself. Otherwise our interpretation of the music would be equal to that of a letter which, ignorant of addressee and circumstances, misses subtle yet vital
aspects such as exaggeration, irony, allusion – and ultimately its meaning altogether. Does, for example, a closing hairpin or a staccato dash mean the same thing to a pianist in 1824 and in 2020? Or do Beethoven’s pedal markings and fingerings make sense in modern piano
technique? In short, I contend that an edition – ‘urtext’ or not – should strive to place the text into its con-texts in order to maintain our connection to a repertoire that is drifting further into the past with every minute.
Mario Aschauer is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Sam Houston State University and works as conductor, harpsichordist, and musicologist at the interface of music scholarship and performance. He holds an MA in harpsichord performance from the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, as well as an MPhil and a PhD in musicology from the University of Vienna, all of which he earned “with distinction.” In 2012/13 he was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting guest lecturer at the Yale School of Music. His first book explores German Keyboard Treatises in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2011).
His current research is devoted to a book on Anton Bruckner’s creative process and was selected for prestigious fellowships from the Austrian Science Fund and the Max Kade Foundation, Inc. (New York).
Dorian Komanoff Bandy (McGill University, Montreal)
Beethoven’s Melodic Embellishments – Tradition, Notation, and Memory
The role of florid, melodic embellishment in Beethoven’s oeuvre has been largely overlooked in the critical and analytic literature, with most studies of Beethoven’s ornamentation focusing instead on the performance practice of trills and other local figures, and most studies of his variations focusing on rhythmic and structural issues rather than melodic elaboration.
In this paper, I re-evaluate Beethoven’s career-long relationship to melodic embellishment.
I begin by examining the ways in which his notated embellishments (particularly those composed for keyboard before 1803) blend aspects of both Mozart’s and Haydn’s variation techniques, and thus provide a concrete demonstration of the synthesis often attributed to Beethoven’s early works. I go on to argue that Beethoven’s changing relationship to
embellishment was prompted not by an increasingly prescriptive approach to notation, as is usually thought, but rather by a wholesale shift in his musical aesthetic which coincided with his retirement from performing. Finally, I explore the resurgence of melodic embellishment in Beethoven’s late period. I argue that, by the 1820s, Beethoven’s florid embellishments take on an almost programmatic quality, appearing almost exclusively alongside musical topics associated with distance, memory, and nostalgia.
Dorian Bandy is an assistant professor at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, where he holds appointments in the departments of musicology and performance. His scholarly work focuses on Mozart and Beethoven, with a particular emphasis on
improvisation, embellishment, and the intersections of performance and composition. He also writes and lectures about eighteenth-century opera, seventeenth-century German chamber music, nineteenth-century Lieder, and various issues in the philosophy of music, including the
‘work concept’, meme theory, and musical meaning. Alongside his scholarly work, he maintains an active career as a conductor and performer on historical violins and keyboards.
Neal Peres da Costa (University of Sydney)
Asynchrony and Arpeggiation in Beethoven’s Works with Piano. Contextualising the Evidence of Annotations by Musicians Connected with Beethoven and Vienna
That Beethoven and his piano-playing contemporaries employed unnotated chordal
arpeggiation and the closely related practice of manual asynchrony (to separate melody from accompaniment) in their interpretations is supported in advice by important musicians closely associated with Beethoven. In 1827, Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) makes it clear that on Viennese or German pianos “Full chords […] are mostly broken very quickly.” In 1839, Carl Czerny (1791–1857) gives rules for unnotated arpeggiation, pointing out that for many pianists arpeggiation had become the norm. In the first half of the nineteenth century, other sources describe piano arpeggiation practices as associated with such signs as slurred staccato (portato), as well as with descriptive terminology such as dolce, con espressione, con anima and so on (Peres Da Costa 2012).
Despite the fairly rich body of evidence, the question remains: what were Beethoven’s expectations for the use of arpeggiation in his piano music? Some answers might be gleaned from looking at instances where Beethoven bothers to mark arpeggio signs, which might be replicable in similar places in his music, a practice recommended by later nineteenth-century musicians. Additionally, some idea (at least) of Beethoven’s practice is discernible from Czerny’s arpeggio annotations in the 1846 Supplement to his Op. 500 piano method, as well as those in the various mid-nineteenth-century English editions of Beethoven’s piano works by Cipriani Potter (1792–1871), who spent some time with Beethoven in 1818 and ear- witnessed his piano playing.
This paper explores Czerny’s and Potter’s arpeggio annotations, contextualising these in the general practices of the era. It will offer live excerpts from Beethoven’s works demonstrating experimental application of such evidence.
Neal Peres Da Costa is Associate Dean of Research and Professor of Historical Performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has received high praise for his ground-breaking and impactful monograph Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) and for the complete Brahms’ Sonatas for solo instrument and piano (Bärenreiter Verlag, 2015/16) which he coedited with Clive Brown and Kate Bennett Wadsworth. Neal is currently a recipient of Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant for research into 19th-century piano playing.
Neal regularly performs with Australia’s leading ensembles and has undertaken cutting-edge research that has led to performances and recordings of Classical and Romantic repertoire in period style including the landmark recording Brahms: Tones of Romantic Extravagances featuring Brahms’s op. 25 Piano Quartet and op. 34 Piano Quintet (ABC Classics, 2017) which was awarded “Recommended CD” in the Strad Magazine (UK).
Siân Derry (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire)
Beethoven’s Tied-Note Notation – An Ongoing Debate
Beethoven’s tied-note notation for piano is often regarded as somewhat of a controversial subject, with notable examples being found in the Piano Sonatas Opp. 106 and 110, and the
piano part to the Cello Sonata Op. 69. Differing views over the execution of this notation have raised many questions, and associations with the Clavichord’s so-called ‘Bebung’ technique are often used as evidence to support interpretations. Scholars such as Badura-Skoda (1988), Del Mar (2004), and Bilson (2004) have all published their own (often differing) views on this subject and in their respective discussions have used examples from Beethoven’s published repertoire, historical performance practice treatises and organological considerations to support their arguments, either for or against the notion of audible repetition.
However, a seemingly unknown figuration, dating from c1790 and located amongst Beethoven’s sketches, has never before been examined in the context of these discussions, and therefore its inclusion adds vital elements to the argument – both that of timescale and alternate fingerings. In drawing attention to this sketch and evaluating its contribution to the evidence surrounding Beethoven’s tied-note notation, this paper will provide a
reconsideration of the available evidence, highlighting how differing interpretations have developed – particularly during the twentieth century – and how new evidence can bring fresh insights to a long-standing debate.
Siân Derry is MA Musicology Course Director, Advanced Postgraduate Diploma
(Professional Performance) Course Director and Assistant Head of Postgraduate Studies at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. After training as a pianist at Royal Birmingham
Conservatoire she completed her doctoral studies at the University of Manchester, with a thesis entitled “Beethoven’s Experimental Figurations and Exercises for Piano”. Her interests include piano pedagogy and organology, and performance practices of the 18th and 19th
Centuries. She has published articles on Beethoven’s Fingering Indications for the Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 58 (Bonner Beethoven Studien) and Beethoven as a Child Prodigy (Oxford University Press). Her forthcoming edition for Bärenreiter Verlag is entitled Figurations and Exercises for Piano. Beethoven on Piano Playing.
Michael Ladenburger (formerly Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)
Beethoven’s Early Approach to Different Types of Keyboard Instruments in Bonn Already as a child Beethoven came in contact with different types of keyboard instruments – clavichord, organ, harpsichord, Tangentenflügel and Hammerflügel, in his early Viennese years with the newly invented Orphika. In times of an accelerated evolution of keyboard instruments with experiments to give even the harpsichord and the organ the desired ability for dynamic variety it seems plausible that Beethoven took part in that evolution for the rest of his life. There were several keyboard players in Bonn in Beethoven’s youth. Court
Counsellor Mastiaux’ home was the most prominent place for Hausmusik in Bonn. He owned several magnificent harpsichords from the leading workshops of Antwerpen. There was only one piano maker in Bonn who tried to experiment with advanced keyboard instruments. Even if he was not successful and disappeared, it seems that he contributed to Beethoven’s lifelong interest in keyboard instruments and the professional discussions with Viennese piano makers later on.
Michael Ladenburger is retired chief of the museum and custodian of the collection of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn.
Martin Skamletz (HKB)
A Gesture of Transgression – Beethoven’s Compositional Response to the Extension of the Keyboard Range in the “Waldstein” Sonata
As a continuation of my recent research on the impact of the piano ambitus on the structure of Beethoven’s compositions for piano around 1800,1 this contribution will have a look at the
“Gassenhauer” piano trio Op. 11 and the violin sonata Op. 12/3 – both composed in 1798 – who present a chromatic transgression of the keyboard range (F–F#–G) which will be taken up in the “Waldstein” piano sonata Op. 53 in 1803 one step higher as G–G#–A.
Martin Skamletz studied music theory and flute in Vienna as well as traverso in Brussels. In addition to his activities as flautist in baroque ensembles, he has held teaching positions for music theory at various institutions including the Swiss Music Pedagogic Association and the Trossingen University of Music in Germany. Since 2006, he is professor at the Vorarlberg Music Conservatory in Austria and as of 2007, he has been head of the Institute Interpretation as well as lecturer for music theory at the Bern University of the Arts HKB, Switzerland.
Tilman Skowroneck (University of Gothenburg) Beethoven and the Split Damper Pedal
This lecture explores a divided knee lever mechanism found in some early Viennese grand pianos by Anton Walter for raising the treble dampers only, with a soft transition in the middle of the instrument. The mechanism is explained, and its musical effects are demonstrated using examples from Beethoven’s works. Beethoven’s handwritten note in the manuscript of the Waldstein Sonata Op. 53, where he indicates that the split mechanism is not to be used, receives a new contextualised explanation.
Bremen-born Tilman Skowroneck studied harpsichord in The Hague and Amsterdam with Bob van Asperen, Anneke Uittenbosch, Ton Koopman and Gustav Leonhardt. In 1991, he was engaged as harpsichordist and fortepianist in the Swedish baroque ensemble Corona Artis. With this ensemble he played a large number of concert productions, and made several recordings. In 1999, he studied fortepiano and performance practices with Malcolm Bilson (Cornell University). In March 2007, he defended his doctoral dissertation about Beethoven’s piano works. His book Beethoven the Pianist was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Between 2009 and 2011 he held a postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Research Council for a research project about Viennese fortepianos, carried out at the University of Southampton. Tilman Skowroneck is senior lecturer in musical performance at the Academy
1 See Martin Skamletz: “Man hat diese Erweiterung des Tonumfanges seit ein paar Jahren an den Tasteninstrumenten sehr weit getrieben.” Der Umgang mit Grenzen beim späten Mozart und beim frühen Beethoven, in: Rund um Beethoven. Interpretationsforschung heute, ed. by Thomas Gartmann and Daniel Allenbach, Schliengen 2019 (Musikforschung der Hochschule der Künste Bern, Vol. 14), p. 263–290. www.hkb- interpretation.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/Publikationen/Bd.14/HKB14_15_Skamletz_263-290.pdf
of Music and Drama (University of Gothenburg). He also works as freelance musician, music scholar, and translator. In 2016, he was appointed associate researcher at the Orpheus institute in Ghent, Belgium, in Tom Beghin’s ongoing research cluster “Declassifying the Classics”.
Yew Choong Cheong (UCSI University Institute of Music, Kuala Lumpur)
A Historically Informed Perspective of Beethoven’s Idiosyncratic Dynamics and Accents in his Piano Works
The qualities of dramatic eloquence and emotional depth are inextricably attributed to Beethoven’s music. Owing to his first-hand knowledge of at least fourteen fortepianos available to him (i.e. eleven Viennese fortepianos, the Erard, the Broadwood, and the Vogel), Beethoven ceaselessly experimented with sonorities and timbres of the piano throughout his creative life. In reminiscence of Beethoven’s playing, Carl Czerny described him as the master of creating “many effects never before imagined”. Indeed, the range of dynamics and tone colour – from ppp to ff and mfp to sf – is considerably expanded in Beethoven’s oeuvre for solo piano, including his monumental thirty-two piano sonatas.
Owing to the total free rein of his imaginative inner ear, Beethoven’s dynamic marks and accents sometimes defy conventional meanings of notation, thus posing interpretative challenges for performers. In fact, his dynamics and accents encompass a variety of
interpretative possibilities: volume changes, articulation signs and climactic points. It is also worth mentioning that Beethoven’s hairpins and certain accentuation signs (e.g. sf, rinf., fp) denote not only volume changes but also agogic inflections which call for flexibility of rhythm and tempo.
This paper offers a historically informed perspective of Beethoven’s idiosyncratic dynamics and accents through the scrutiny of the scores of his piano works as well as the comments on his performance and musical intentions by his contemporaries such as Carl Czerny and Anton Schindler, among others. Consideration of scholarly commentary by the nineteenth-century musicologists and performers, including Louis Spohr and Hugo Riemann, may also help to illuminate some of Beethoven’s dynamics and accents. Thus, this paper explores
interpretative possibilities of Beethoven’s notational idiosyncrasies by considering the musical context and functions, with the purpose of serving as a guide for the performance of his piano works.
Yew Choong Cheong holds his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate Degrees from West Virginia University (USA) under full scholarship and graduate assistantship. His teachers include Prof. Dr Peter Amstutz and Prof. Dr P’ng Tean Hwa. Despite hearing impairment, Yew Choong is a prize-winner of several competitions. As an educator, Yew Choong has presented lecture-recitals at the international conferences in Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia. He has also been invited to give master classes and workshops in Indonesia and Thailand. Yew Choong is currently Assistant Professor at the Institute of Music, UCSI
University in Kuala Lumpur. He has designed a range of Master’s music courses and is teaching applied piano, piano literature, performance practice and music theory. He also serves as a research supervisor for both undergraduate and postgraduate research projects.
Clive Brown (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien) Beethoven’s Sonatas Op. 47 and Op. 96 – Text and Sub-Text
The sonatas Op. 47 and Op. 96, hurriedly finished for performances by visiting violinists (George Bridgetower in 1803 and Pierre Rode in 1812), were not published until a couple of years afterwards. In both cases, autograph material of the original versions is mainly or wholly lost. The manuscripts that survive make it clear that the published versions differ in many ways from the music that was heard at the premieres. In the case of Op. 47, we have a fragmentary autograph of the exposition of the first movement (probably the copy from which Beethoven played in 1803), and a single authoritative first edition, based on a surviving set of copyist’s parts with corrections and amendments in various hands, including those of
Ferdinand Ries and Beethoven himself. For Op. 96, in contrast, we have a complete
autograph; but this is an entirely new score dating from 1815, which served as the source for separate sets of copied material, no longer extant, from which the almost simultaneously published Vienna and London first editions were engraved. The 1815 autograph begins like a fair copy, but soon shows signs of revision, some of which is substantial. No material for the original version of the sonata is known. Revisions to the copied material of Op. 47, itself probably reflecting an earlier stage of revision, Beethoven’s rewriting of Op. 96 and the discrepancies between the two first editions of that sonata, cast fascinating light on the relationship of the final text of the sonatas to the original versions.
Perhaps more significant for a modern performer, however, is the relationship of Beethoven’s notated text with its sub-text. This sub-text, which the composer expected his notation to convey to the performer, required many deviations from the literal meaning of the text. Some of these subliminal messages were undoubtedly inherent in the notation itself, and represent Beethoven’s specific intentions; others reflect his expectations for expressive performance.
The former were common practice in Beethoven’s Vienna, and were understood by any educated musician to be inherent in the notation; the latter could only be satisfactorily achieved by an experienced and intelligent musician who fully appreciated the difference between a performance that was merely correct (richtig) and one that was beautiful (schön).
Within a few decades of Beethoven’s death, understanding of this sub-text was already
changing, and during the course of the 20th century, an exaggerated and unhistorical reverence for the literal meaning of the text led to the delegitimisation of all significant deviation from it. Not every aspect of the sub-text as it might have been understood by Beethoven and his contemporaries can be known, but many important elements can be retrieved. If we allow ourselves to respond to historically-verifiable elements of the sub-text, we can achieve a manner of performance, more flexible and inventive than our inherited 20th-century Urtext- based mentality permits; it will not be the same kind of performance that Beethoven’s contemporaries would have given, but it is likely to be much closer to his conception of the music.
Clive Brown was a member of the Faculty of Music at Oxford University from 1980 to 1991 and is now Emeritus Professor of Applied Musicology at the University of Leeds and Guest Professor at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Vienna. Monographs include Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography (Cambridge, 1984; revised German edition 2009),
Classical and Romantic Performing Practice (Oxford, 1999; Chinese translation 2012), and A Portrait of Mendelssohn (Yale, 2003). He has also published numerous articles on historical
performing practice. As a violinist he has concentrated on practice-led research and
performance. His critical, performance-oriented and contextualised editions include the Franz Clement, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos, Brahms’ complete Sonatas for one Instrument and Piano (with Neal Peres Da Costa and Kate Bennett Wadsworth), Beethoven’s 1st, 2nd, and 5th symphonies, and Choral Fantasia, Elgar’s Music for Violin, and, most recently, Beethoven’s complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano.
Claudio Bacciagaluppi (HKB)
Hans Georg Nägeli as Publisher and Bookseller
It is well known that Hans Georg Nägeli published the first edition of Op. 31 in his series
‘Répertoire des clavecinistes’, incorrectly printed and with the unapproved addition of four bars in the opening movement of Op. 31/1. Beethoven was considerably irritated and discontinued his correspondence with the Zurich publisher, bookseller, composer, and
pedagogue, but eventually renewed it. He apparently had sufficient reasons to esteem Nägeli, or approved perhaps on the whole of Nägeli’s promotion of his own music.
My contribution will start from here and consider the Beethoven sonatas in the context of the series and of the other Beethoven titles in Nägeli’s catalogues as a publisher and as a
bookseller. Nägeli’s repertoire choices can be in turn examined in the light on his assessment of Beethoven as renewer of keyboard music through virtuosity.
Claudio Bacciagaluppi (PhD in Musicology 2008 in Freiburg i.Ue.) is a collaborator at the Swiss office of RISM and at the Bern University of the Arts HKB. His research focuses on Baroque sacred music in Naples and Switzerland, as well as performance practice and music education in the early 19th century. Together with Angela Fiore he publishes Musico
Napolitano, an online biographical index of musicians in Naples. Most important publications are: Rom, Prag, Dresden: Pergolesi und die Neapolitanische Messe in Europa (Kassel, 2010), the critical edition of Pergolesi’s D-major Mass (Milano, 2015), the edition of Giuseppe Sigismondo’s Apoteosi della musica del Regno di Napoli with Giulia Giovani, Raffaele Mellace and Rosa Cafiero (Rome, 2016) and Artistic Disobedience. Music and Confession in Switzerland, 1648–1762 (Leiden, 2017).
Susanne Cox (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn) Searching for Beethoven’s ‘Concept’ –
Working Manuscripts Between Sketch and Fair Copy
In November 1821, Beethoven wrote to the publisher Adolph Martin Schlesinger concerning his piano sonata in E major Op. 109 that he had written out his ‘concept’ in a more detailed manner than usual,2 and shortly afterwards, in February 1822, he wrote relating to the c minor sonata Op. 111: “[...] in the midst of so many scattered activities it happened that I handed the copyist my mere first concept, so that as it sometimes happens some things were still
2 “[...] mein Concept weitlaüfiger aufgeschrieben als gewöhnlich”, letter to Schlesinger, 13 November 1821 (No.
1446), quoted from: Ludwig van Beethoven. Briefwechsel. Gesamtausgabe, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg, Vol.
4, Munich 1996, p. 455.
imperfectly and not properly indicated”.3 What did the composer mean by ‘concept’ in those letters?
Beethoven wrote down the piano sonata Op. 111 twice: In addition to a complete autograph score of the sonata, another score which was written out earlier has been preserved. This manuscript only contains the first movement of the sonata and shows many traces of
Beethoven’s revision. Also for the sonata Op. 109 some pages of the ‘Urschrift’ (a preliminary attempt at writing out the sonata, with many revisions) have survived.4 Manuscripts like these can give an insight into the compositional step following the sketching, the elaboration of the score. But such early autograph scores of works have been preserved only in exceptional cases.5
It is possible, however, that Beethoven used such composing scores more often than the situation of tradition suggests. Sieghard Brandenburg assumes that particularly purely written autographs, with few corrections, were preceded by score sketches or composing scores, of which Beethoven copied the final score.6 Did Beethoven himself call such composing scores
‘concept’?
My paper will focus on this particular sort of manuscript and try to answer the following questions: Which characteristics do the manuscripts have? Does the way of writing resemble that of sketches? What was the function of these manuscripts for Beethoven? Were they self- addressed like sketches and intended only for his eyes? And: Should we assume, due to copying errors that can be found in Beethoven’s fair copies, that there was previously a
‘concept’ from which Beethoven copied and which has been lost?
Susanne Cox did her studies of musicology, history and economics at the University of Koblenz. In 2012 she received her Magister Artium with the edition of the Lieder verschiedener Völker WoO 158 by Ludwig van Beethoven (XI, Vol. 3 of the Beethoven- Gesamtausgabe). 2012/2013 she worked as an academic assistant at the editorial office of the G. Henle Verlag in Munich. Since June 2014 she is research associate at the project
“Beethovens Werkstatt. Genetische Textkritik und Digitale Musikedition”. She finished her PhD on Beethoven’s Engelmann sketchbook in February 2020.
Sandra Rosenblum (Concord Academy Emerita)
Publishers’ Practices and Other Happenings in the Life of Beethoven’s Quintet for Piano and Woodwinds Op. 16
Any early edition of music that bears directions destined for another publisher invites examination of philological issues as well as of performance practices. Such is the case with Beethoven’s Grand Quintetto pour le Forte-Piano avec Oboe, Clarinette, Basson, et Cor, oû, Violon[,] Alto, et Violoncelle. Composed in 1796, the Quintet received its first performance
3 “[...] in so vielen zerstreuten Beschäftigungen geschah es, daß ich dem Copist mein bloßes erstes Koncept übergeben, wodurch wie es manchmal zu geschehen pflegt manches noch unvollkommen u nicht richtig angezeigt war”, letter to Schlesinger, 20 February 1822 (No. 1458), quoted from: ibid. p. 474.
4 See William Meredith: The Sources for Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E Major Opus 109, Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1985, pp. 186–188.
5 For example, for the piano sonata Op. 101, for the Opferlied Op. 121b, for the Bagatelle Op. 126 No. 2 and for the folksong setting WoO 158 No. 20.
6 See Ludwig van Beethoven. Keßlersches Skizzenbuch, Vol. I, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg, Bonn 1978, p. 11.
with Beethoven at the piano in Vienna, April 1797; publication by T. Mollo (plate number 151) followed in 1801. While a few sketches survive in scattered sources, no autograph seems to be extant.
Several different copies of the piano part have propelled this investigation. One is a complete print (lacking the title page) of the piano part of Op. 16 with plate number 161, the edition first published by Simrock in 1802. This copy is replete with verbal and numerical
designations along with small circular musings and x signs scattered about. What might they mean? At the top of page one, in a very fine hand, is written “au lieu de rfz il faut simplement rf.” These handwritten addenda indicate preparation of the score for use by another publisher, possibly French. A singular clue, 249–250 at the bottom of page one, suggests a surprising solution.
Another copy, bearing plate number 151 of Mollo’s first edition, includes many musical substitutions that were pasted over the original measures. Notable is Sen:Sor [senza sordino]
with a rising arpeggio in m. 19 of the opening Allegro, an affect used by Beethoven only much later in this movement. What do these musical substitutions reveal about the owner of this copy, and also about the common performance practices of the early nineteenth century?
The Quintet Op. 16 is among three works (along with the Concertos Opp. 15 and 19) issued simultaneously by Mollo that contain Beethoven’s first published indications for raising and lowering the dampers of the piano. Although other composers had published such indications earlier, and several contemporary tutors for the piano had discussed some common practices, Beethoven’s indications were sparse and occasionally shocking. These and other clues in Mollo’s edition of Op. 16 may highlight some subtleties of Beethoven’s performance style during this early period in his career.
Sandra Rosenblum is the author of Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music, a book widely acclaimed by critics and translated into Italian and Korean. Her journal articles have appeared in Early Music, Journal of Musicological Research, Fontes Artis Musicae, NOTES, and Proceedings of the International Chopin Congresses of 1999 and 2010, among others.
Book chapters include an extensive “Historical Introduction” to a facsimile of Muzio
Clementi’s Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Pianoforte (1974) and “The Same Piece for Different Pianos, Chopin’s Response: A Study of ‘Twin Autographs’” in Clefs pour le Piano/Keys to the Piano, ed. Ziad Kreidy (2018). Rosenblum has given presentations, master classes, and adjudicated piano students at national and international conferences and
universities. She has been the recipient of honors and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies, NEH, the Wilk Prize of the Polish Music Center, and the Billings Prize of Wellesley College. She is emerita chair of the Department of
Performing Arts of Concord Academy, MA.
Tom Beghin (Orpheus Instituut, Gent)
Beethoven’s Erard Piano and his ‘Waldstein’ Sonata Op. 53
Beethoven’s Erard Frères piano en forme de clavecin arrived in Vienna in late October 1803.
It prompted a period of intense pianistic activity that resulted in his production of Op. 53 (‘Waldstein’), completed by early January 1804 (Skowroneck 2002, Rose 2005). I will argue that, as an artistic research project on the pianist-composer’s part, Op. 53 encapsulates
technology-related exploration and experimentation. A new replica of Beethoven’s French piano has allowed us to study both its dependences and dependencies (Hodder 2012) with remarkable detail and clarity.
My lecture-demonstration will start with a series of C major scales, jotted down by Beethoven in Landsberg 6 (Lockwood/Gosman 2013, Cooper 2016). They provide intriguing context for what I call the horizontal vs. vertical paradox – defined from a pianistic perspective, but with broad aesthetic and compositional implication. ‘Horizontal’ refers to the Viennese way of conceptualizing and executing gesture, while ‘vertical’ applies to an inevitable engagement with heavier and deeper French piano keys. These motion-descriptive notions also apply to a French-inspired use of the Erard’s four pedals, which may be approached either individually (foot down) or in combination (foot sideways). Beyond finger-and-foot acrobatics, such an embodied and technology-based approach to Op. 53 reveals deep French acoustical roots of Beethoven’s ideas.
One must make a distinction, though, between Op. 53’s pre-publication and published
versions – a distinction that may well reflect the original and revised (or ‘Viennicized’) states of his French piano. By January 2, 1805, Beethoven had given in to ill-advised revisions to his Erard. Four months later, he published Op. 53, no longer as the four-movement Grande sonate he had initially intended (Cooper 2017), but as the two-movement ‘monumental’ piece we now know – a transitional Introduzione replacing an earlier Andante. About his Violin Sonata Op. 47 Beethoven had said he wanted to dedicate it to both Adam and Kreutzer, because he “owes Adam on account of the Paris piano.” Did a ‘Viennicized’ dedication to Count von Waldstein (the man who famously sent Beethoven to Vienna so as “to receive Mozart’s spirit through Haydn’s hands”) also obliterate its French roots?
As an extra, Tom Beghin makes accessible (until November 8, 2020) the performance of the full ‘Waldstein’ sonata on Vimeo. You are best prepared for his talk, when you listen to it prior to his paper. Link: https://vimeo.com/419831007; Password: Beethoven_and_the_Piano Tom Beghin combines a career as performer with that of researcher and teacher. His
published work spans various media, from commercially released CDs to academic essays and books. His monograph The Virtual Haydn: Paradox of a Twenty-First-Century
Keyboardist (Chicago, 2015) followed his recording of the complete solo Haydn keyboard works (Naxos 2009/2011). He co-edited Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, winner of the 2009 AMS R. Solie Award. 2017 saw the birth of Inside the Hearing Machine, an amalgam of publications on Beethoven’s late piano sonatas and deafness. Results of a research project on Beethoven’s 1803 Erard piano are forthcoming. Alumnus of the HIP- doctoral program at Cornell University, Prof. Beghin taught at UCLA and McGill University.
Since 2015, he has been Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator at the Orpheus Institute for Advanced Studies & Research in Music, in Ghent, Belgium, while also serving on the Associated Faculty of the Arts of the University of Leuven. His research cluster Declassifying the Classics focuses on the intersections of technology, rhetoric, and performance.
Christine Siegert (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)
Beethoven’s Encyclopedic Writing for the Piano Abstract tba
Christine Siegert is head of the archive and the publishing house at Beethoven-Haus Bonn.
She published extensively on philology, (digital) edition and music around 1800.
Leonardo Miucci (HKB)
The Agogic Use of Dynamic Marks in Beethoven Piano Sonatas
Recent studies on the piano notation belonging to the half of the 19th century (for instance, focused on Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, etc.) have stressed the clear attempts prompted by these composers to communicate agogic indications expressed throughout notational solutions which essentially belonged to the dynamic sphere. This contribution founded traces and possible connections with such similar approach adopted by Beethoven as well into his piano repertory (mainly sonatas). Referring to the diversified use of the marks “decresc./dim.”
this paper focuses principally on the use of hairpins. These indications, provided with a possible ‘hybrid’ meaning, design a pianistic style in deep evolution between the 18th and 19th century, both in the aesthetical values and in the notational solutions as well.
Leonardo Miucci is a musicologist and a performer on historical instruments. Over the last years he dedicated himself to several studies on Beethoven historical informed performance practice. His PhD, on Beethoven piano sonatas, is in course of publication with the
Beethoven-Haus Bonn – institution where he developed his first post-doc (2017–2019). He published many contributions on Beethoven’s HIP, and he has spent great attention on this composer as a performer as well. He is releasing the first world recording on historical instruments of the complete piano quartets: the first CD (“The Young Beethoven”,
RSI/Dynamic with the 3 WoO 36) has been recently awarded with the “Premio Abbiati del Disco 2020” by the Italian Music Critic Association. At the moment he is developing his second post-doc (at the HKB), and he is teaching music history (Matera Conservatory) and historical piano (CSI Lugano).
